Songdelay, 1973
Wind and Songdelay are two of Joan Jonas’s early performances filmed in the open air, in either natural or industrial environments. Wind, made on a snowy beach on Long Island in 1968, is one of her first performances incorporating the use of mirrors. Various figures perform enigmatic actions fighting against the wind: covered in masks, they walk back to back or take their coats on and off. Filmed with long shots, Jonas allows the wind to dictate the movements of the performers.
In 1973, Jonas used her performance Delay Delay (1972) as a base for her piece Songdelay. The original action took place in abandoned industrial spaces by the Hudson River in New York and the River Tiber in Rome. Here the artist turns this same action into a work of filmic experimentation, by altering the depth of field through the use of different lenses – a wide-angle lens and a telephoto lens – and playing with a time delay between the image and the actual sound of the action.
Technical details
- Original title:
- Songdelay
- Registration number:
- 2950
- Artist:
- Jonas, Joan
- Date created:
- 1973
- Date acquired:
- 2007
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium
- Object type:
- Audiovisual recording
- Media:
- 16 mm film transferred to video, b/w, silent, 19 min 40 s
- Credits:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium
- Copyright:
- © Joan Jonas, VEGAP, Barcelona
- It has accessibility resources:
- No
The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.
For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.
If you need a high resolution image of the work, you must submit an image loan request.